Whatever you think about climate change, it's obvious that several states and municipalities are conspiring to extort oil companies by using lawsuits to allege damage due to climate change. The conspiracy is blatantly hypocritical, and ExxonMobil's lawyers are having a field day. The litigants suing ExxonMobil now have previously asserted in their bond offerings that the risk of climate change was unknown or unknowable. From ExxonMobil's response to the lawsuit:
Implementing a different page of the La Jolla playbook, a number of California municipal governments recently filed civil tort claims against ExxonMobil and 17 other Texas- based energy companies. In those lawsuits, each of the municipalities warned that imminent sea level rise presented a substantial threat to its jurisdiction and laid blame for this purported injury at the feet of energy companies.Notwithstanding their claims of imminent, allegedly near-certain harm, none of the municipalities disclosed to investors such risks in their respective bond offerings, which collectively netted over $8 billion for these local governments over the last 27 years. To the contrary, some of the disclosures affirmatively denied any ability to measure those risks; the others virtually ignored them. At least two municipal governments [one of them San Mateo] reassured investors that they were "unable to predict whether sea-level rise or other impacts of climate change or flooding from a major storm will occur, when they may occur, and if any such events occur, whether they will have a material adverse effect on the business operations or financial condition of the County and the local economy."
So when they want to borrow money, climate change is no risk; when they want to sue for damages, climate change is a huge risk.
